Why Cathy Lee Gifford is just like the United States of America

Sky Gilbert
From:   Digressions of a Naked Party Girl. ECW Press, 1998.

She's mean
She's greedy
She's very very pretty
And of course she's a lying hypocrite
And of course she's on TV every morning
And just like America, Cathy Lee Gifford is a drag queen
And what's a drag queen?
Well someone who just can't stop drawing attention to how pretty they are I
mean Cathy Lee everytime she moves her legs or bats an eye or touches her
hair she reminds you, in that subtle way she has of how beautiful she is and
yes okay so she IS beautiful but more than that each gesture says I'm
beautiful, so beautiful, and that I'm barely, just barely conscious of it,
and on top of that I'm intelligent (questionable) and vicious. I can be
vicious. If I have to, I can defend myself against anything and I'll still
be beautiful, oooh I'm just stamping my little high heels right now and
removing a stray lock of hair with my long long dangerous fingernails yes I
can stand up for what I believe and be glamorous too
And I believe in America (which means myself) Cathy Lee Gifford
And I believe in fidelity and marriage and love (and all the other lies)
And even when you find my husbands fat hairy wrinkly old dick up some
forty-five year old Exercise Queen in a hotel I can pull my life back
together and lie
Like drag queens and the United States of America I can lie
I can exploit Latina women in sweat shops and then I can appear with
President Clinton and I can lie
And you will love me, Cathy Lee Gifford
You will
But most of all, you will watch me on TV
Because that's the way mornings are;
Inescapable, the beginning of all that treachery and drudgery and then
there's me, being more beautiful than you'll ever be
Look at me
I'm Cathy Lee
I'm some kind of an achievement

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5

Sky Gilbert's works copyright © to the author.